December 1, 2011 // 6:58 pm - DICE Product Manager Tommy Rydling has announced today that Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand for PlayStation 3 hits PSN Tuesday with new guns, vehicles and assignments.

Below are the details, to quote: I hope you are ready to go Back to Karkand, as we are releasing our first Battlefield 3 expansion pack Tuesday, December 6th on PlayStation 3 in America and Europe - a week early for PlayStation customers!

To recap, Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand is a massive themed expansion pack featuring four legendary Battlefield maps reimagined in the Frostbite 2 engine.

You also get three vehicles (the VSTOL fighter jet, Desert Buggy, and an APC), ten new weapons that you can bring back to the base game, a new layer of persistence with our all-new Assignments, plus five shiny Trophies.

The maps we chose for this expansion pack are all classic fan favorites: Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman, and Strike at Karkand (from where the expansion pack got its name). These maps are about all-out warfare in a variety of settings and have collectedly been played literally billions of times by our players.

Now, they are due for a reimagining with the power of the Frostbite 2 engine. This allows us do things like take the level of destruction to ridiculous heights. You can basically turn these entire maps into rubble (with the exception of Wake Island, which has a lot less buildings and is more of an open landscape).

The design idea for Back to Karkand is that these legendary maps have aged since you last saw them. If you are a returning veteran, you will feel instantly at home, but there will also be a sense of exciting rediscovery about them. If you have not played on the before, they are simply a great addition to the nine available multiplayer maps in Battlefield 3, building on all the strengths of the series.

Now, let's turn our eye to take a closer look at Assignments, specifically the "Let it Rain" Assignment. To complete this assignment, players must score 20 kills with Light Machine Guns and two mortar kills.

The game will keep track of how far along you have come fulfilling this assignment. When you have met the requirements, you will unlock a new Back to Karkand weapon (with a matching set of dog tags) to use on any map including the base game. You will also unlock the next Assignment in the series, the new Creeping Death Assignment.

As with all of the Assignments introduced in Back to Karkand, you can keep building towards these no matter if you play on regular maps or maps from the new expansion pack itself. Your regular persistence will also be intact and keep building up no matter what map you play. In this way Back to Karkand is completely integrated into the base game, including the ability to have a map rotation mixing base game maps with Back to Karkand maps.

And before we go, here are the five new Trophies you can hunt in Back to Karkand:

Complete Warrior (Silver)Get a kill with the following weapons in a single life: Rifle, Jet, Tank

Third Tour (Bronze)Get a kill with the new APC, Desert Buggy, and STOVL fighter jet

Gunslinger (Bronze)Get 10 kills with all B2K weapons

Like a Boss! (Silver)Get a kill with the skid loader

Jaws (Bronze)Take a swim in the pool at the Oman hotel

We will keep supporting Battlefield 3 on PS3 for a long time, so we hope to see you online Tuesday and beyond. Let us know what you think about Back to Karkand in the Battlelog forums.

If you are a Battlefield 3 Limited Edition owner, you are entitled to this entire expansion pack at no extra charge and you can get it from the in-game store or the PlayStation Store, just make sure to activate your Online Pass if you have not done so.

Otherwise, you can buy it for $14.99 from the game's in-game store or from the PlayStation Store. Future expansion packs for Battlefield 3 will also be available one week early exclusively on PlayStation 3 like Back to Karkand."

I think this should be the case if a DLC is announced before the game is even released. But if they were to include all DLC on the disc we would have a delayed BF3, which will annoy a lot of people. But I do agree that DLC should be free, I bought the game then I should have all the extra content for free and not pay for it after.

I don't agree.

Sure, some DLCs should be free considering they don't add much, but some of them really take extra effort on the part of developers and should be offered for a fee only.

Should have been included on the disc instead of charging for it so soon after release!!! That's why I DON'T buy DLC!!!

I think this should be the case if a DLC is announced before the game is even released. But if they were to include all DLC on the disc we would have a delayed BF3, which will annoy a lot of people. But I do agree that DLC should be free, I bought the game then I should have all the extra content for free and not pay for it after.